Dragon spacecraft makes perfect splashdown

The SpaceX craft hit the ocean right on target.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down near California at 8:42 local time this morning, capping an almost flawless mission that went so smoothly that it was difficult to recognize its intricacy and incredible degree of difficulty.

Before Dragon left the International Space Station, the astronauts aboard used the new Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (Dextre) multi-armed robot to inspect Dragon's non-pressurized trunk. The trunk had no cargo for this demonstration mission, so the inspection was strictly a dry run and showed that there were no stowaways. Some material brought to the International Space Station will reside outside the station; that portion will be removed from future cargo craft by Dextre.

At about 4:07am ET Thursday morning, Don Pettit used Station's robotic arm to separate the spacecraft from its berth and released it about 40 minutes later. Dragon eased itself away using three quick departure burns, quickly falling below the Station's orbit.

A lot of eyes watched Dragon closely during the descent. Flight Engineer Don Pettit took a protective air toward the young spacecraft, calling Mission Control to ask whether it had splashed down correctly only a few minutes into the re-entry. Elon Musk, the company's founder, sat in the front row of the SpaceX mission control room, hunched over a desk to watch the monitors. Two NASA tracking aircraft circled below in the atmosphere, and NASA controllers followed the craft from Johnson Space Center, broadcasting updates on NASA TV.

Dragon's "trunk," the aft portion of the spacecraft, separated at approximately 11:09am ET, and quickly fell into the distance as the spacecraft completed a de-orbit burn. Entry interface, the time when atmospheric drag first takes a tight hold on the spacecraft, took place at 11:25. The two NASA tracking aircraft acquired Dragon as it developed a hot coat of plasma, which blocked communication. This time is known as the "blackout period," because of the lack of radio transmissions.

This last part of the mission, successfully bringing a spacecraft from 17,000 miles per hour to 0 in 19 minutes, is by no means the least difficult. The spacecraft must be oriented correctly before doing a deorbit burn to lower itself into the atmosphere, firing its thrusters in the opposite direction of its travel. Once the atmosphere catches the craft, deceleration occurs quickly, and there is no turning back if something looks wrong.

Reentry depends on the craft's heat shield and a good attitude (in this case, orientation, not positive thinking). Dragon uses a relatively new heat ablative shield material known as PICA-X that is machinable and much lighter than the AVCOAT coating used by the Apollo capsule. PICA stands for Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator, developed by NASA Ames Research Center in the 1990s. SpaceX developed PICA-X themselves, and it has the advantage of being ten times less expensive to manufacture.

An ablative heat shield is designed to wear away as the spacecraft descends, carrying heat away with it and allowing very little through to the spacecraft. PICA-X is very tough though, and SpaceX says Dragon's heat shield could theoretically be reused many times without being replaced.

When friction has slowed the spacecraft down sufficiently, Dragon deploys two drogue chutes to slow itself further. About a minute later, at an altitude of 45,000 feet, the main chutes pop. Dragon has three main chutes, 116 feet in diameter apiece, and all three deployed without a hitch this morning. Once they opened, it took 6 minutes for the craft to fall slowly to the surface of the Pacific Ocean, smacking the watery bullseye at exactly 27 N 120 W. A nearby SpaceX barge motored toward the spot as the two NASA aircraft circled to relay spotty video back to both SpaceX and NASA headquarters. NASA headquarters, in turn, radioed the news back up to Don Pettit.

A press conference should be occurring as this publishes on NASA TV, and it will be rebroadcast periodically throughout the day. All in all, the mission was 9 days, 7 hours, and 58 minutes. One can make conjectures regarding what SpaceX employees have been doing during that time, and the several days leading up to it, but the possibilities probably didn't include a lot of sleep.

Promoted Comments

On another note: do we know what the cost difference between Dragon and a Shuttle is?

Given that the two vehicles have different capabilities, I'm not sure a direct comparison is warranted. The Shuttle orbiter was part of the launch system; Dragon is not. Also, how much a launch costs depends on the mission. SpaceX has to satisfy NASA requirements to fly cargo or crew to the ISS, so those missions will probably cost more than something like an unmanned DragonLab mission for a different customer. It's not just the vehicle that costs money; you also have mission support costs (pad and payload prep, mission control, stuff like that).

And CRS is not the only project for SpaceX. They're going to be launching non-government payloads with the F9 and FH, and if the FH performs as advertised, they could potentially get launch costs below $1000/kg.

I fully expect to see SpaceX's advertised prices go up as they start building and flying more hardware, though.

I really cannot sufficiently express how impressed I am that this all went off without a hitch. I think my job is hard but nothing explodes when I do it wrong.

Obviously they are not the first people to get something to space and back in one piece, but they came outta left field and did it (according to the sources I've heard) for less than an instagram. I remember when I first heard of them a few years ago I thought their dreams were essentially impossible. Very happy to be wrong!

I really cannot sufficiently express how impressed I am that this all went off without a hitch. I think my job is hard but nothing explodes when I do it wrong.

More than agreed. Although the parents in my school district do seem to lose that perspective when they can't get access to their child's grades online for a half an hour because one of my servers hiccuped ...

Quote:

did it (according to the sources I've heard) for less than an instagram.

Is 'Instagrams' the new unit of measurement for money (like LoCs for data)?

If we're talking about manned spaceflight, I'll get excited if and when we leave LEO once again.

I can buy that. It's been way too long since we have. Entire generations have grown up without seeing it happen. Getting back to the Moon now would be just as magical as it was decades ago. I'm in my early twenties, and I can absolutely say that I'd be glued to the television for a Moon landing.

Well done SpaceX! hopefully the current and next iterations will have process improvements to make launch even cheaper. hopefully we can get to the point within the next decade or two where LEO is something people do like they use commercial aircraft.

I am pretty confident that come Friday night, SpaceX people are going to be throwing down one HELL of a party!

And well deserved it will be! I hope Musk provides a hooker of the gender of their choice for the weekend for each of the staff who sweated blood and Red Bull to make and test the hardware as well as those men and women who sat glued to their workstations 24/7 this week concentrating all their efforts to make sure that everything ran as smoothly as it did.

The original Apollo flights were fueled not by rocket fuel, but coffee and cigarettes. I understand that you're probably not allowed to smoke in mission control anymore, but if ever there were a time to light a fat stogie, this would surely be it.

On another note: do we know what the cost difference between Dragon and a Shuttle is?

Given that the two vehicles have different capabilities, I'm not sure a direct comparison is warranted. The Shuttle orbiter was part of the launch system; Dragon is not. Also, how much a launch costs depends on the mission. SpaceX has to satisfy NASA requirements to fly cargo or crew to the ISS, so those missions will probably cost more than something like an unmanned DragonLab mission for a different customer. It's not just the vehicle that costs money; you also have mission support costs (pad and payload prep, mission control, stuff like that).

And CRS is not the only project for SpaceX. They're going to be launching non-government payloads with the F9 and FH, and if the FH performs as advertised, they could potentially get launch costs below $1000/kg.

I fully expect to see SpaceX's advertised prices go up as they start building and flying more hardware, though.

Most impressive indeed. I wonder when their next run is, and when they plan their first manned flight.

First CRS flight is no earlier than September. IINM, manned flights will be no earlier than 2015. I think they plan on using CRS flights to develop and test some of the elements required for manned flight.

So awesome that everything went perfectly despite that initial launch hiccup. Looking forward to many more successful launches in the future!

It would be cool if Ars did a feature story on the whole SpaceX development up to this moment. I'm sure most of us would love to learn more about the years of science, tech, and people behind all of this.

Screw that. I don't care whether we go back to the Moon or Mars any time soon. Given the choice, I hope to live to see an O'Neill-style orbital space colony. A permanent rotating human settlement in space, with manufacturing capability and 1G gravity, chomping away on asteroids as they come in.

It would be cool if Ars did a feature story on the whole SpaceX development up to this moment. I'm sure most of us would love to learn more about the years of science, tech, and people behind all of this.